Ja Rule Compares Prison To High School, Recalls Famous Inmates

Ja Rule recently spoke about his time in prison. The New York rapper also talked about famous inmates he met while incarcerated.

“I was there with [former Tyco International CEO] Dennis Kozlowski, [former New York state comptroller] Alan Hevesi, Larry Salander, the art tycoon,” Ja Rule said of fellow celebrity inmates during an interview with Complex. “They were all good guys. Me and Alan, he’s a Knicks fan like me, so we watched a lot of Knicks together, never missed a game. We talked politics. The election was going on while I was locked up, Obama and Romney so we would talk a lot about that. Hevesi is a Democrat so we were on the same side [Laughs].

“Dennis, me and him spoke once in awhile; he didn’t really interact too much with a lot of inmates, but me and him spoke,” Rule continued. “Larry, he was really a great guy, painted a couple of pictures of me and stuff. We all in a situation and we really have no choice about the matter, so you make the best of your time. You get to know one another, you become somewhat friendly with the guys. You just do your time.

“In the state [prison] I was in PC [protective custody], but when I got to the Feds I was in population,” he said. “So you get to interact a lot more with a lot of guys that you may know. Spigg Nice from Lost Boyz was in [Federal Correctional Institute] Ray Brook [in Ray Brook, New York]. He was there. He’s doing like 30 years [for a bank-robbery spree]. We kicked it. We ain’t seen each other in a really long time. We had a lot of old stories to talk about. It was cool to see him and some of the other dudes I know from Queens. But I know guys from everywhere, dudes I knew from Boston, dudes I knew from Chicago. There was dudes I knew from Detroit, just from me traveling.”

Ja Rule also spoke about whether he had problems with other inmates while he was serving time in prison.

“Not really at all, which was surprising,” Rule said of beef in jail. “I thought, there’s always at least one out of every group. There’s always one bad seed or one dude that wants to try to be whatever. But it wasn’t like that. It’s kind of high school. You go in, you got your A crowd, you got your B crowd. You got your nerds. You got your jocks. It’s kind of the same way, and as soon as I walked into the joint, I was a part of the A crowd. Shoutout to everybody in Ray Brook, Midstate.”

Rule is now reportedly awaiting the October 2013 release of I’m In Love With a Church Girl, a motion picture he will be starring in. During his time in prison, he served at Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, New York, Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York and Federal Correctional Institute Ray Brook, according to the report. Rule said there was “really not much to do in prison, but work out, read [and] watch TV.” He also said he had a job working in the warden’s office, “doing little odd jobs, sweeping, mopping [and] watering plants.”